The present invention relates to a system and method of detecting channel occupancy, such as in a listen-before-talk (LBT) communication protocol.
In many communication systems, a transceiver of a device follows an LBT protocol to ensure that a communication channel is clear before transmitting on the channel. In typical systems that employ communication channels having a relatively wide bandwidth, devices employ a transceiver that has the ability to detect a signal that is present anywhere within the channel bandwidth. The sensitivity of the transceiver is also typically quite high, to ensure that any signal that might be present on the channel is detected. As a result of the performance characteristics that are required, transceivers in typical systems can be quite expensive to implement, and can result in detection of false positives due to their high sensitivity across the entire channel bandwidth.
An improved system and method for detecting the presence of signals on a communication channel would be a useful advance in the state of the art.